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"Warheads"Written By: ExecutiveShrimp Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs
to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. Written for pleasure not
profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Post War, angst, fluff, psychological
issues, lemon Pairings: 2x1 Summary: Duo and Heero try to become more than
comrades in their attempt to be normal young men. They settle down
but find that peacetime is difficult to adjust to and with only each
other to rely on, it is a struggle, especially for Heero. " Warheads "
I was in another dull conference room. It looked identical to the one I had been in before, except the door wasn't busted open and it wasn't locked to begin with. I had taken a seat in a one of the chairs at the massive table. The leather creaked as I shifted uncomfortably. Nerves replaced an eerie calm repetitively. My heart rate would briefly speed up and I would get a sick feeling in my stomach. But then it would subside and I would be left feeling... nothing. I couldn't even think. Not the things I wanted to think about, nor the things I didn't want to think about. My mind was blank and quiet. I guess even the God of Death had no clever remarks. Lady Une had been kind and forthcoming, respectful and sensitive. I might have to thank her for that one day. But at the moment I didn't feel very grateful for anything. "He didn't tell you?" She replied to my question, sounding genuinely surprised. "He didn't tell me anything!" I exclaimed, standing in the middle of her office, not knowing whether to be angry or concerned. Struggling with my decision on how to feel and where to put those feelings, Lady Une continued her soft-voiced explanation of the situation. "We didn't know that he didn't tell you, Duo. We assumed he had." "He said he had a desk-job, that he worked here as a hacker!" I was feeling faint, overwhelmed with emotions. I felt my knees might buckle any second from the weight I had been carrying around in my chest. Her delicate eyebrows knitted to a slight frown. "Well, he did. But only for a week or two. He has been working missions for months now. He did stress that he couldn't be away long, that he had to be home each night. I never figured that was because he was trying to keep this secret from you." "Trying?" I burst, "Trying? He succeeded! I only stumbled across the truth by mere, stupid coincidence!" "Duo, calm down." She pressed, her eyes looked worried. She tried to get me to sit down but I violently shook her hand off my arm. "Maybe you should rest for a while." "No! No! I want to know everything! I want to know the truth! Right now!" I suddenly felt someone standing behind me. I pivoted on my heels and my dark eyes fell on the short figure of Reid Mixson. "You." I accused, pointing a finger at him. "You were in on it!" With both hands I grabbed his shoulders tightly and pulled him towards me. His face was only inches away from mine and he could see the dangerous rage in my eyes and I let him have a good look. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He proclaimed pathetically. "Duo! Let him go!" I did, but not because she told me to. I feared that if I had held on even a little bit longer, something would be unleashed from within me that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Reid showed bravery by standing where I had put him down, right in front of me. His eyes were earnest and pleading. "I'm sorry." He whispered and raised his hands a bit in submission. "Mixson," Lady Une started with a strict voice, "you knew special agent Yuy was keeping this secret from Duo?" He nodded meekly. "I helped him." "Why?" I demanded. "Why?" He seemed baffled. "I was supposed to say no to the most infamous of the Gundam pilots who happens to be my boss?" He spoke sarcastically. "Boss?" "Mister Mixson is Heero's assistant." Une explained. "Look, he told me to keep this secret from you. I didn't think anybody would get hurt from it. He said it would be better if I helped it remain a secret." "He said that? He literally said that?" Reid nodded vigorously. I sighed. I didn't understand any of this. I didn't understand why Heero would lie to me like this and why he would go to these lengths to keep the true nature of his work secret. "I gotta sit down." I said and found myself a chair to fall down on heavily. I was so exhausted my body threatened to collapse in on itself. "Mixson, you're excused." I heard Lady Une say. I closed my eyes, not to rest them, but to prevent tears from falling out and rolling down my cheeks. I took a few seconds to calm myself, to gather my strength so I could handle this . I opened my eyes and saw Une sitting across from me, looking at me. "So he's been going on missions for months now?" I asked with a hoarse voice. She nodded. "Did you make him or-" I took a deep breath, "did he ask for it?" "It was fairly gradual. He worked very hard as a hacker, so hard that, honestly, we were running out of work for him. He had increasingly more free time on his hands and I could tell that he... needed more. He started helping out creating tactical assault and invasion schemes for the field teams. He did that a few days and then we got a really hard mission. Two agents had already died on previous, botched attempts-" "What was the mission?" I interrupted. "We had to stop the illegal shipment of Gundanium alloy from a space port in North Carolina to an independent resource satellite off L3." I was surprised she told me and let her continue. "We couldn't catch them in the act, couldn't make any arrests. The two agents had gone undercover but were exposed and executed. Heero sat in on a meeting, during his lunch break, like it was the most normal thing in the world and suggested a bold plan. A dangerous plan." I nodded, he had a flair for the sort. "The team Captain wasn't impressed, he said we didn't have a man on payroll who could do the job, questioned if it was even possible. Heero said that he could do it. At first, I didn't let him, it was dangerous and I was afraid that even if he would succeed it would prove to be detrimental to his recovery from the war. But, as you might imagine, at that point, he insisted and after a third failure there really wasn't anything I could do. We sent him off with the team. He managed to dump the team, leave them behind to do it by himself. He was back in six hours and told me to send an arrest team to North Carolina. We found seven men, all tied up, on crates of stolen, government issue Gundanium and a camera filled with photographic evidence. The seven men ratted out the rest of the cartel immediately-" She looked at me meaningfully "something had definitely spooked them." I knew what she meant. I had seen the Perfect Soldier just that Friday. "The case was closed. The men were tried and sentenced. I sent Heero back to his desk in the CIA department. Two days later, on an unrelated mission a whole team of agents disappeared. I asked him to hack the computer we had confiscated for that mission and he found videos of the agents being executed. He walked into my office, right before he was about to head home... and he told me... "The Preventers need a man on payroll that can do the impossible"." She was silent for a moment, contemplative. She looked at me with a pained expression, but at the same time I could tell that she had known that at that moment, she had made the right decision. "I just told him he should take his request to Administration. The next day he had his own office, an assistant, a team to captain - which he refused- and a new security clearance card." She leaned over and made me look her in the eye. "He saved a lot of lives, doing what he does." "I thought he had already saved enough lives." I said bitterly. "I thought the time had come for him to let someone save his life. Instead he has been lying to me..." I finished with a mutter. "I think he only lied so you wouldn't worry." "What kind of an excuse is that?" I spat, rising to my feet. "That is ridiculous! I was a Gundam Pilot too! If anyone would understand it would have been me!" "You would have been understanding?" "Well... yeah! After giving him a few good knocks on the head I would have!" I paced the room back and forth a few times before I suddenly stilled. "Wait? Where is he now anyway? Is everything alright?" She didn't answer me. That wasn't good. I rushed out of her office, too quick for her to catch me. She may have called out my name but I paid her no heed, I walked up to the first employee I saw, sitting behind one of the computer screens in front of the map. "You." I tore his headset off his ears and cast it aside. The tech looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes. "Where is special agent Heero Yuy." He swallowed and then pointed at the map. "He's right there, sir." My gaze followed his finger, hoping to see Heero's figure in the glow of the computerscreen, waiting for that relief to wash over me and cleanse my heart from sorrow and worry, but I was disappointed, the path set by his indication led to the large map of the world. My eyes settled on the single red light, in Africa. "He's in Africa?" "In Ethiopia, to be exact... sir." "What the fuck is he doing there?" The young man blinked at me, unsure what to say. Une called out my name from the doorway to her office. "Let the man do his work. Heero will be home all the more faster if you stop harassing him." Recognizing my reluctance to leave him alone, she continued: "I will tell you everything. I promise." I walked back into her office and reseated myself. I looked at her expectantly, trying to read her expression as she closed the door before she sat down at her desk. She folded her hands together and her mouth tightened. "It's hard to be a friend and diplomatic at the same time." She said out of the blue and then let more silence resume. "To tell you about an old case is one thing," She finally started, "but to tell you about an open case is something else." I nodded, I understood. But I had every intention of keeping her to her promise should she try to diplomatically shimmy her way out of it. "Do you know of the situation in Ethiopia?" "No." I answered directly, not ashamed of my oblivion for I had a feeling it was the answer she was expecting. "That's good. So we've managed to keep a lid on it here in the RUSA. Till now..." She straightened in her seat. "So here's the situation. For decades Ethiopia has suffered under a crooked government and with the help of an RUSA secret service agency a new president was appointed four years ago, an honest man who could bring balance and equality to the country. It had been going great since, but a senator, who liked the way things were previously, has been planning an assassination on the president and is staging a coup d'etat. If this senator is allowed to assume control, things will reverse into the poor state that they were; the poor will get poorer and starve and dehydrated all through the country and the rich will get richer from the money made by all the dams that will be built, that bring terrible drought to most of the country. The mission is to assassinate this senator, making it look like an accident." I was surprised that the Preventers took matters into their own hands to this extent, but I didn't let it show. "So, Heero and his team is there now, to do this?" "No, not a team. Heero prefers to work alone-" "Alone? ! You sent him there alone? You never send an agent out by himself!" "Will you let me finish?" She barked. I quieted myself down and nodded to encourage her to continue. "Because Heero is so damn stubborn he has been doing the smaller, lower risk missions by himself. But for this mission I refused to send him in alone, so I assigned him a partner. He wasn't happy with it, but I told him that was the only way I would let him go." "Who is his partner?" "Agent Levelt. He is rather new to foreign missions, but with his expertise in explosives I figured he could best complement Heero on this particular assignment." I just let all the information come into me. I wasn't sure everything was registering, but I decided to ponder it more carefully later on, when I would have a quiet moment to myself. "Heero is fine at making things go "boom" quite spectacularly, but because we needed to set this up as an accident, Levelt's precise knowledge would be preferred." She reached into a drawer of her desk and got out a folder, the front of it read CONFIDENTIAL in red, stamped on, letter. With her long fingernail she flicked it open and got out a large folded piece of paper. She opened it and turned it right-side-up towards me, spread out on the edge of her desk. I leaned over and recognized it as a map of Ethiopia. Her slim finger pointed at the city at the South edge of a large lake. "They're in Bahir Dar. Senator NgGasi likes to spend his holiday there. He has rented out an entire hotel for this weekend, paid with drug money that has made him an exceptionally wealthy man. We knew this was our best chance. The building is old, no one would think twice of a fatal structural malfunction due to a gas explosion." She looked at me sharply. I reached over the desk into the folder and slid out a picture of what I presumed to be the hotel in question. It looked high end, but obviously it had seen better days. The facade was cracked due to the exposure to the relentless African sun. Being an explosive expert myself, I started planning the job in my head. I reached into the folder again and caught the blue print of the building between my fingers and pulled it towards me. The elevator shaft in the center of the building provided most support to the entire building. Both gas pipes and electrical wiring ran up and down the North wall of the shaft. "How would you do it?" She asked, catching onto my train of thought. Something automatic, instilled into me, took over. "Cut the gas, to eliminate that as a variable, restore it once the job is done, of course. Probably set the main charge along the main line to imitate the failure and set secondary and tertiary charges on other floors, against different pipes, cause they are all independent, closed systems, so they would blow up independently of one another in case of a real gas explosion. Placing charges on three consecutive floors should be enough to weaken the shaft. Leave the top few floors untouched, the weight of them will crush down on the weak spot and the three floor fall, that won't give much resistance, will allow the momentum to build up and it will basically be an unstoppable domino effect down to the basement." Her lips curved in a small smile. "That's exactly what agent Levelt suggested." "Then I guess he's pretty damn good." I let out a short chuckle. I eyed the photo and the blue print lengthily. It seemed like a straightforward mission, the only real obstacle to face was to get into the building unseen to set the charges and to get out before the charges go off. I trusted Heero to ghost himself into that building and I trusted him to fathom himself out of it. I had confidence in his abilities, as my comrade during war I had no choice but to trust him and that trust was never misplaced, so it stuck. Agent Levelt, however... I knew nothing of his abilities - capabilities. To me, he seemed like the most unreliable variable. "If they got it all planned out, why the delay?" "The last message we got from them was an unexpected visitor arriving. The bodyguards we knew we had to live with as collateral damage but we couldn't with good conscience let that building collapse onto itself with NgGasi's eleven year old daughter present." Civilian causalities. My heart started to race with remembered dread. Seeing innocent lives get wasted in the throws of war is something to never be forgotten. The fact that I never even saw the faces of the people whose lives I took makes it even worse, because it's so anonymous and I have that distance, but their families don't. They will remember those faces forever with tears in their eyes, because of me. Even the bad people who we sacrificed to reach the end of the war, were someone's family. To them they weren't the generals and colonels responsible for unnecessary death and suffering, they were just their father, their mother, their son or their daughter. "When did you receive this last message?" She didn't need to check her watch, obviously she had been keeping close track of time. "Little over four hours." "Four hours?" I shook my head. Four hours was a lifetime. Worse still, four hours could mean the end of a lifetime. "Did you send a back-up team?" She nodded slowly. "Standard procedure is after an SOS call, or after three hours since the last communication." My stomach felt tight and alien in my body. "They only left an hour ago?" I remembered the black aircraft I had spotted on the runway just as I arrived here at the Kennedy train station. "I think I saw them leave..." I uttered, mostly to myself. "The SuSo53?" "Yes. They should be in Kenya in about eighty minutes. We've made some improvements. It's good to be faster than people actually think you are." She elaborated as she caught my look that clearly read: that fast? "From there they will transfer to a stealth aircraft, like Heero and agent Levelt did. We are not supposed to be in Ethiopia so it's better no one knows we were ever there. Can't land there with the world's fastest but loudest airplane." I sighed again. It was so much information, combined with so many feelings. It became confusing to me. My arms felt heavy and my legs felt weak. My head felt like veritable paradox, heavy, but empty at the same time. The lack of sleep was steadily catching up on me. "I think you should rest for a while. I will keep you updated." That was an hour ago and not a word yet. Alone in that conference room, the pieces of the puzzle that I had been carrying in my pocket for a long time finally slipped into their places and a coherent picture started appearing out of the confusing jumble. Every time when I tried to contact Heero at work and after so many rings finally Reid Mixson would answer, Heero was God knows where, on a mission and his assistant was merely covering for him, feeding me more lies as side-dishes to the main, filling, gut-wrenching lie. That one time I was able to reach him, I quickly gathered, when he claimed to be working in the computer room, he was probably in truth on board the SuSo53, lying to me some more, thinking me a fool. And I was a fool! I also remembered the flight to Relena's mansion and the crew that had greeted Heero with a grin. They knew each other, from missions! The bruises finally made sense too. He didn't get that large, rib-breaking bruise on his abdomen from a tumble on the basketball court and he didn't fall down the stairs this week. The small bruise I had seen on his breastbone a while ago - I scolded myself for not recognizing that bruise, for I have seen and caused many of the like - the telltale sign of a fortunate wardrobe choice: a bullet being denied it's purpose, caught in a Kevlar vest. I felt stupid, betrayed, angry, concerned, sad, but most of all, at that moment, I felt desperately helpless, sitting in that room, just waiting on the outcome of events on the other side of the world. At times like that, my hands best remembered the weight of my gun, or the resistance of the throttle of Deathscythe. But my tools had been taken from me, opportunity had been taken from me. There was nothing I could do but pray, but I wasn't very good at that. Growing up, getting nothing what you ask for, eventually makes even just asking the question too hard to bear. I almost felt Heero would be better off without me praying for his safety, for I feared by prayer I might call a wrath upon him that was meant for me. He might be taken away from me because some higher power wants to smite me. "He's going to be okay." I said to myself out loud. My voice sounded firm, but even as I said the words, I did not trust them. All I could trust in were Heero's skills and hope that they would be sufficient. I closed my mind and remembered a joint mission during the first war. "Put that out." Heero said strongly. I peered at him from underneath my eyebrows, but hadn't quite mastered the death-glare yet - the student had would never surpass the master. I held the flare in my hands by his face to see better, of course even in the dim light my eyes had not misguided me, his expression was dead serious. "What for?" Instead of answering my question one of Heero's strong hands suddenly to came up to fight me for possession of the flare. The fight soon tipped to his advantage and as soon as he had pried it out of my grip he threw it to the ground and the flame doused in the deep, black puddle of water it landed in. As the light died, we were engulfed by darkness, swallowed into the deep realms of the earth's crust. Far behind us was a single spot of the light, the only opening back to the real world. "Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?" I stomped my feet childishly, splashing up water, but I couldn't see a thing. Still, I felt his gaze on me, piercing through my skin like needles. He didn't say anything for a long time and just let me rant about the "damned darkness". Heero was in one of his most stoic periods at the time. Then his deep voice interrupted me: "We are both carrying ten kilos of explosives on our backs and you light a flare?" I snorted. "Well, is a life worth living if you can't live a little adventurously?" I bantered. "Is that what you call it? Adventurously?" "Well, what would you call holding an open flame to a backpack of explosives?" I hissed sarcastically. The question was rhetorical, but he wasn't too sensitive to that, so he replied: "Irresponsible. Dangerous. Negligent. Immature." "Whoa! Don't use up your words for today, Heero. By now you only have like... four left and we haven't even started!" I joked, seeing the vague outline of his shoulder, which I playfully punched. My eyes started to adjust and I could dimly see his silhouette. I saw him reach deep into his pockets, what he pulled out I couldn't see, but it soon became clear. I heard something snap and crack and then a stick in his hand started to glow a bright green. I whistled. "Fancy. Doubt Indiana Jones had one of those though, so your kind of ruining the fantasy for me here." In the glow of the light-stick I could see his eyes and the clear question in them: Who is Indiana Jones? Or maybe the question the was: Does he ever stop talking? He never voiced either of those questions and silently just started further down the tunnel and I followed him. The stick helped to illuminate the ground directly before us and helped us coordinate our footing on the uneven layer of muddy clay but we couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of us, in contrast to the flare that I had had, which lit the way several yards into the tunnel. "Well, it's safe, sure, but is it efficient?" I said "efficient" in such a way that he must have recognized, for of the few words he said, that was obviously his favorite and he always said it in a distinctive way which I imitated, but it didn't provoke any response. We followed the tunnel deep into the earth, balancing our feet on deep tire tracks left in the mud by large machinery. When I looked back, I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel any more. But considering the analogy, I took it as a positive sign and quietly followed Heero. I would have whistled, just to annoy him, get him to say something, but we were in enemy territory and if someone opened fire on us because they caught my rendition of "always look on the bright side of life" echoing down the tunnel, I might survive the initial wave of gunfire but not Heero's wrath. We finally reached a point where the single tunnel branched off to the left. This corridor was fenced off by a high, chain-link steel fence that left only a small crevice at the roof of the circular tunnel. It was the way we had to go. I carefully took off my backpack and fumbled in one of the side pockets for the heavy duty set of plyers I had brought. Sadly, they were no match for the thick steel. "We're gonna have to climb this baby." I announced after fighting with the plyers for a while. Trying to cut the lock on the gate was hopeless as well. If my partner had been anyone but Heero, I might have gotten a "well, duh", but I got nothing. Heero put the stick through the fence and let it fall to the ground. The fence started to rattle as he climbed into it effortlessly, quickly reaching the opening. He barely fit through. He lowered himself down on the other side and then ordered me - oh he had the nerve - to pass the bags through one by one. I grabbed his first, pulling one strap over my shoulder and climbed the fence to the top, not nearly as elegantly as Heero had but I had the heavy bag as a believable excuse. I pushed it through the opening, for a moment fearing that it wasn't going to fit. "Heads up." I said and then let go of it. Heero caught it and I don't know if he felt it too, but after a drop from that height, my heart skipped a beat. When nothing when epically "boom", I jumped down the fence for my own backpack and passed that through to Heero as well before climbing through the opening myself. We both picked up our bags. Feeling the familiar weight I joked: "Think this will be enough to blow the complex?" Heero didn't catch my sarcasm and in the green glow of the light he had picked up he shared with me his infamous death-glare. "You did the math." "Relax! It'll be fine. We could probably blow it with half this shit." "So you made us carry double the load, for no reason?" He asked as we walked away from the fence. "Yeah, just to be safe, you know?" "Doesn't seem very efficient." He grumbled. I smiled. We jogged the short distance to the end of the tunnel. We had reached the outer layer of the building. The steel wall was eakened by a maintenance door, large enough to have trucks pass through. I felt tugs of the straps on my shoulders as Heero rummaged in my backpack. With a hammer he hit the pins out of the hinges of one door. I stood ready, holding the weight of the door. Together we slowly lowered it down on the ground. "Heavy." I grunted. "Captain Obvious" the members of the sweepers crew used to call me. Considering some of the nicknames a chosen few of the other's had gotten, I knew myself to be lucky. Heero drew his gun and stepped through the opening we had created. I followed suit. Suddenly Heero crouched down and raised his balled fist. I ducked into a shadow and held my breath. Long moments passed. Finally, I hissed at Heero to get his attention. "What is it?" "Thought I heard something." I snorted and pushed past him. "Call yourself a Gundam pilot..." I muttered, "... Freaking out at every little sound... Almost shot a poor rat or something..." I ripped the door to the staircase open and with my gun first walked inside. It was clear. I called Heero in and we ran up the stairs to the ground level. The halls were all deserted. Employees had responded to the alarm and returned to their respective quarters and the guards had been distracted by an explosion just within the perimeters of the compound. Nothing I had anything to do with, of course. I tapped my leather gloved fingers on a sign that read "FACTORY FLOOR" and an arrow pointing ahead. Heero nodded. We jogged down the hallway to a door that had the same sign and a large red sticker that read: "AUTHORIZED PERSONEL ONLY". Being about as "unauthorized" as they come, I pushed the door open. Jackpot. We entered a large open space; the factory floor. A broad rubber conveyor belt led what looked like pieces of shrapnel by all the large machines, but someone had pressed the emergency stop and a red light flashed brightly. It was standard procedure for workers to clear the floor during a threat till further notice. Since further notice had obviously yet to come, we had the place to ourselves. "No Gundanium allowed for the Ozzies." I said, picking up a jagged shard of the special metal that with the right chemical and heating process would become the impenetrable alloy. The factory floor was right at the heart of the ground floor, on which three more floors of offices and sleeping quarters were stacked. To allow such an open space to be able to carry the weight of the concrete slabs above it, six columns spread evenly throughout the open space were constructed. Blow the columns and everything would come crashing down. I winked at Heero. "This is the fun part." I walked over to the nearest column and took off my backpack. We had assorted the explosives in even packages, one should be enough for each of the columns, but to be safe - and to create prettier fireworks - I had doubled up, so I stuck two packages to each column. I whistled Heero over when my backpack was empty and used the explosives he had been carrying for the final three. The columns were absolutely massive. Seeing their size made me question my math, but I shook it out of my head. I was good at this. I knew what I was doing. "All personnel return to your work place. Repeat: All personnel, return to your work place." A nasal voice announced loudly over the intercom. I looked at my watch and cursed. I was sure the explosion would keep them on their toes for at least an hour. "Shit." I said softly. "What?" "I said: Shit! We gotta reset the timers. These things gotta blow up before the workers come here and find them. Let's hope they're lazy!" My fingers worked furiously at the timer of the last charge I had placed. "Go! Go!" I yelled to Heero, who was still standing there. "How long?" He asked, walking over to the other side of the column to reset the timer. I wiped the instant sweat of my brow. "Pfff. Set them to 09:47." I said, running over to the next. "Four minutes?" Heero questioned, but he worked the timer regardless and jogged over to his second. "Will that be enough to clear the place?" "Only one way to find out!" I scrambled over to my third as Heero rushed to his. By the time we had adjusted the final timers, we had already lost a minute. I ran back towards the exit, picking up my backpack along the way and en route handing Heero his. With our guns drawn, but in too much of a hurry to really check around the corners and past doors, we chased each other down the hall. I realized, in my panic, I didn't know which way to go. "Which way? ! Which way? !" "Left! Left! Left!" Heero yelled back. My body slammed into the steel door to the staircase - that's one way to open it. "Two minutes!" I announced as we flew down the stairs. I burst out of the door at the second floor underground, where we had entered and we headed back out through the door we had pried open. The chain link fence appeared before me like an impossible obstacle. A deafening alarm went off, alerting us to OZ's discovery of the explosives. I hoped no one would try to dismantle them by taking out the timer, that would instantly set them off and we hadn't cleared the kill-zone yet. Heero jumped into the fence and swiftly climbed to the top and over. I threw my bag to the ground and climbed up as well. "Duo, first the bags!" Heero ordered. "Fuck you, Yuy. We got like a minute!" I said between pants. I pushed my way through the opening and lost my balance. I fell down on the other side hard and groaned. Strong hands grabbed the fabric of my shirt at my shoulders and lifted me to my feet. He started running and dragged me along by my sleeve. "When will we be clear?" I asked as I literally ran for my life. "We have to clear the tunnel, it will likely collapse from the shockwaves!" "Fantesticles!" I screamed. The light at the end of the tunnel appeared. I just hoped dearly it wasn't the metaphorical light. We were both knocked off our feet when the ground shook powerfully and a giant rumble resounded. I instantly looked at the glow-in-the-dark hands of my watch. 09:47 "Come on!" Heero pulled me back up by my hand and kept holding it as we ran like idiot towards that distant light. Behind us I could hear the most frightening sound of concrete crashing and the floor kept shaking, making it hard for us both to maintain our balance. Then I heard earth moving, an even more frightening sound. The tunnel was collapsing. Almost there! Almost there! "Almost there!" I screamed, squinting my eyes at the light that got brighter and brighter. After what seemed like forever we passed through the mouth of the tunnel, back into daylight, but Heero kept tugging me along in full sprint. He didn't stop till we were about fifty yards out of the tunnel and we both threw ourselves to the ground, utterly exhausted, blowing up dusty sand with our labored breaths. I rolled over on my back and sat up a bit to look at the black mouth of the tunnel, it seemed fine. "What the-? That isn't very-" All of a sudden a cloud of black smoke and brown sand burst out of the mouth and I could feel tiny flecks of mud and God know what hitting me in the face. When the dust settled, the tunnel had disappeared I was just looking at a solid side of mountain. "- spectacular." I finished, breathless and let myself fall back to the ground. "You okay there, buddy?" "I'm not your buddy." Heero puffed, lying on his back, his chest heaving as he panted through his wide open mouth. "If you say so, pal." "I'm not your pal." I snickered. "You might as well stop fighting me on this one, mate." And he did. "Uh, Duo? Mister Maxwell?" I got my head out of my hands and looked up at Reid Mixson standing in the doorway of my secluded conference room. "Just "Duo" is fine." He nodded. "Lady Une sent me to get you, she has an update." I followed him through the command center back to Une's office. I looked at my watch but I was so tired it was hard to tell the time. "Duo, I hope I didn't have Mixson wake you." "No and even if... any news at this point is welcome." She nodded. "The back-up team was dropped in lake Tana by Bahir Dar and made visual contact with the target building about fifteen minutes ago. The building has been successfully collapsed. But they haven't found Heero or agent Levelt yet, nor have they confirmed whether or not the mission itself was a success." "So what you're saying is that in three months a random guy operating a bulldozer might stumble upon their bodies?" Before she even had the time to answer I announced I had to sit down for the second time that evening and promptly did, right where I stood, on the dark blue carpet. I didn't feel like myself all through that evening, I felt like an important part of myself, the verible psychological crutch, with which I have been holding myself up since a denied childhood, had been taken from me. Locked away somewhere deep and secret and only Heero had the key. Une came to kneel by me and placed an elegant, lady-like hand on my shoulder. "I'm saying that at the very least they were able to set the charges and make them go off. That means they made it through most of the mission, which brings me hope they survived the last step as well." I thought that was very naive of her to think and that perhaps she should know better, but I understood why she chose to assume this perspective. It was certainly easier. More forgiving on the mind and the heart. But my mind and my heart always knew better and could not deny that. False hope has broken my heart many times in the past, acquired cynicism made me become immune to it. I laid myself down on the floor like Heero and I had after escaping from that tunnel and I hoped with all my being that he was doing this right now, just blowing off some steam somewhere, riding the waves of the adrenaline rush. I was surprised - no, shocked - when she lay down next to me, kicking off her high heeled shoes. We both stared up at the paneled ceiling of her office. "I'm sorry for allowing Heero to become an active field agent." She started. "Don't be. I know him. When he wants something, he can't be stopped, so you might as well cooperate." "Are you angry with him?" "Yes." I briefly looked into myself and felt that rage tug at my heart, made me flare my nostrils and wiggle my mouth discontented. "Not for being a field agent though. That's his decision and I have no right to judge. I'm angry that he didn't tell me. What does a relationship mean when you can't be honest with each other?" Une snorted. "You're asking the wrong person. There's a sleeping bag and a pillow in that cabinet over there, because I hardly go home. I don't even have a toothbrush at home, let alone someone who's expecting me." "I'm sorry." "It's fine. My phone vibrates." Laughter consumed us both, catching us by surprise. In between her chuckles, she asked me: "I'm sorry, was that inappropriate?" "Hell yeah." I answered, still laughing. "Lady Une?" We both looked up at Mixson's baffled face. "Yes?" She slowly got back to her feet. I got back into a sitting position, my legs didn't feel strong enough yet to stand. "There's news from Special agent Santiago." "Duo, stay here." She ordered seriously and walked out of her office barefoot with Mixson trailing behind her. I was too tired to stand anyway. With a thundering heart I waited for her to return with news. When she did return, about five minutes later, I could tell the news was bad, still I asked. "Yes, it's bad. But not for you, particularly. The mission failed. The first news reports are in, "Senator NgGasi escaped Bahir Dar death trap". " "Do they buy it as an accident?" "We won't know for a couple of weeks, when the Ethiopian investigation of the explosion will be concluded. But two SuSo53's landing in a neighboring country is not something that will be overlooked. No proof of course, but he will get cautious." "And still no word from Heero and Levelt?" She shook her head apologetically. "Lady Une!" An anonymous voice screamed from the control room. She rushed out and I mustered the strength to follow her, spurred on my the immediacy in the tech's voice. The man I had talked to earlier had turned in his seat and waved us both bother, he kept one hand on the headphone over his left ear. My feet raced, as did my heart. "What is it?" She demanded, leaning over his shoulder to look at the mostly blue screen, just a few lines of grey code at the top left. "COM code 3045 is trying to contact us." "COM code 3045? What is that? Une, what is that? I that Heero?" I blabbered, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans but there was no use. I really hated the not-knowing, being an outsider in a world I was once considered an expert; one of the best. "Yes, it's Heero." She said softly. She turned back to the tech, her voice changed when she talked to her employees. "What are you hearing?" "Just static, ma'am." He unplugged his headphone so we could hear; rhythmic bursts of static. "Try to trace the signal." He scrunched up his face uncertainly. "Tracing a low frequency signal from across the world, ma'am? I can't even hear him, let alone pinpoint him." "If contacting the base in Kenya was a possibility, he would have done that. Obviously, it isn't, the line to Kenya is probably compromised. Just try it this way, okay? You!" She waved another tech over. He scurried over to her. "Contact special agent Santiago and his team, have Keller work his magic, maybe he can trace the signal from their position in the field. Tell the chopper crew in Hamusit to stand-by for an immediate emergency airlift." "Yes, Lady Une." he rushed back to his desk. "Is he okay? Does this mean he is okay?" I managed a strong voice, listening to the static with a half ear. A concerned frown took to her face once more. "He might be, Duo. I want you to have hope but... We've seen malfunctions just like this before, it might just be his microphone going on and off due to damage." The static filled the heavy silence between us.
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